When my mother asked me recently how I was getting on at work – as mothers do – I began to tell her about all the travelling I’d been doing. She couldn’t believe how many miles I was putting in but, of course, for anyone doing this kind of job, it’s just a routine part of one’s life.  Unfortunately that life does occasionally begin to resemble one of my favourite films – “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” with Steve Martin and John Candy. There was one very memorable occasion when I was on my way to Washington for a meeting with the US Food and Drug Administration.  I arrived at the airport and went to pick up the hire car I had arranged.  Opening my suitcase to retrieve the sat nav revealed an array of women’s clothing.  Obviously it wasn’t my luggage!  But trying to get back into the baggage hall to track down the true owner of the garments or find my own suitcase was virtually impossible.  That’s when I felt I really was in a Steve Martin comedy.

So, the true cost of travel can go well beyond the financial aspects. It doesn’t only include lost luggage and the effect on the nerves.  Jet lag is a real problem, and that is one reason why I have cut down drastically on my international trips.  Unless I can go for a reasonable block of time, my week can be effectively wiped out.  But I still do a fair bit of UK travel.  Since my last blog I’ve been down to London twice – to a very successful alumni event and to a meeting with Defra.  This afternoon I’m off again, to a Royal Society debate on food security.  I know that my mother would be asking why I bother!

The answer, of course, is that some meetings really are important. I stress the “some” here, and I thought I would take the opportunity to share some of my own criteria for choosing which meetings I will trek down to London to attend, and which I would decline.  For me there are three important reasons for attending a meeting: to influence; to network; to learn.  If you’re lucky you can do all three at the same time, but it’s helpful to have one in mind as your primary objective.

Taking the first of these, you need to ask yourself whether this meeting really is inviting you for open consultation. Are the organisers genuinely keen to hear your views or have decisions already been made?  There are some indicators that will help to give you a clue.  For example, are the organisers offering to pay your travel expenses?  Or do you get the sense that you being invited simply to make up the numbers?

If you are interested in going to a meeting in order to network, obviously you will want to see the list of people attending. Maybe there are individuals you know of and who you know are influential, but you haven’t yet had a chance to meet.  You will want to make a point of speaking to them and following up any such contacts after the meeting.  It sounds obvious, but I really learnt about the importance of making time to do this during my years at Fera.  Building a network helped both the organisation’s profile and, of course, my own career.  You need to be thinking about both of those aspects because they will work together.  What’s good for the organisation will also benefit all of our careers.

Then there are meetings where you will learn important information. Even in the era of information technology, this can often be achieved most effectively face to face.  Leaflets and webinars are useful tools but cannot replace being in the room and hearing the discussion and questions first hand, while also being able to contribute.  That is vital in order to understand all the issues, and events such as Town Meetings are really important for all of us.  Funding from the research councils and from the challenge funds, are often launched at such events and it is essential that you engage with the process at this early stage, from that very first briefing.  Very often the communications loop will only include those who have been there from the beginning, and who stick with it.

Taking all of this into account, my top tips for decision making about which meetings you decide to attend are:

• Make sure you are inside the tent, not outside – where this is the launch of an initiative that could be valuable in the future be there from the outset.
• Stay with it as the initiative develops because those who don’t may be dropped from the communications loop and will miss out on being involved in its development. If you really can’t attend make sure you send a trusted deputy.
• Never leave a decision-making meeting early, even if that means catching a later train. The really important decisions will be made right at the end.

I’m not the only person who does a lot of travel, of course, and at this time of year in particular we are all feeling tired. I’m looking forward to some days of rest over the Easter break, as I hope you are too.  Let’s hope the snow and ice are over and that we can all make any journeys to see family and friends safely and without that “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” experience.

The Beast from the East has kept most of us indoors more than usual over the past week. Over the weekend this meant I spent more time at my desk.  Although I do normally spend some time carrying out routine admin tasks, I generally manage to get some time to myself as well.  But this week I spent the whole of Saturday and Sunday writing research papers and catching up on items I’d been promising colleagues for a while.  My daughter was with us for the weekend and she obviously thought this was a pretty dull way to spend one’s “free” time.  But I’m not sure I agree.  Doing research and writing papers is the creative part of being a scientist and I think for most of us it’s what drew us into academia in the first place.

I often think of an old friend who died recently, who was also a scientist. He used to say “I can’t paint or do any of those other creative things, but I can design experiments.”  I know exactly what he meant and that is why I was quite happy to spend my weekend writing up my research.  When you can start to look at problems in ways that haven’t been tried before, think about them from a completely different perspective, and begin to work towards new solutions, that’s what gives me a real buzz.  Nowadays research also provides the opportunity to work with colleagues across the world.  Nobody has to be the lone scientist working away without human contact any more.  We are constantly linking up, using technology such as Skype, discussing papers with co-investigators in other countries sparking ideas off one another and co-authoring papers.

I have my own theory about what draws people into science. Children are universally interested and curious about the world around them but many, perhaps even most, seem to lose that as they grow into their teens.  Scientists, I think, manage to retain that inquisitive spark.  We are certainly at the extreme end of the spectrum of childlike curiosity, so maybe our development is arrested in some way!  At a time when, as I discussed in my last blog, it often feels as though we spend all our time measuring science, perhaps we should be spending a bit more time celebrating that childlike joy in scientific creativity.  If we lose any sense of wonder about advancing human knowledge, we might as well give up on science completely.

Of course there is always a downside to success in science as in any other undertaking in life. The more research you do, the more papers you publish, the more returns you have to make about those publications.  (Yes I’m thinking of you Researchfish, among other obligations.)  Thus, it seems as though the more creative you are, the more time you then have to spend on non-creative tasks.  You might be tempted to assume that failure to comply never catches up with you or even that nobody is going to read the returns anyway.  However, I now know that isn’t true as I also received an email at the weekend, complaining that I hadn’t included the requisite number of characters in a particular box!  And so, back to the admin.